Sunday, September 13, 2009

DDOT Bus Changes to Go into Effect 9/26/09

Thursday the city announced the changes to the bus lines. According to an article in the Detroit News, when the ridership data from the fareboxes shows less than 15 riders per hour, the route is considered to be "failing." Two routes (the Grandbelt and Holbrook) are being eliminated completely. Other routes are having weekend services cut or overall time between buses increased. See the official list of changes on the DDOT website. Changes are expected to reduce expenses by $5million.

Given how quickly these changes were decided upon and how soon they will go into effect, I am even more convinced that the earlier bluster about ending all service at 6pm Saturday and ending it totally on Sunday was in fact just a distraction to make the intended cuts more palatable to residents. What I find amazing is Bing implying that huge changes to weekend service were never really on the table and simply blown out of proportion by the drivers union. I am currently looking at the "Proposed Service Changes" document handed out at the DDOT public hearings and definitely that proposal is there--on page 12, under a bold and underlined heading which reads: "Proposed changes for Sunday's[sic] include the discontinuance of all service on all routes." Hmm.

No comments:

Post a Comment